The Trent University Board of Governors met on March 24th to pass the university budget for 2023/24. The budget includes total operating expenses of $179.4M and anticipates a small surplus of $356,000 over the next year. 

Included in the projections are increased expenses to TUFA and OPSEU staff salaries following their recent rounds of collective bargaining alongside increases to student financial aid. Tuition revenue is expected to increase by 7.8% over the course of the next academic year going from $111.3M to $119.9M. 

The budget for the upcoming academic year accounts for the fact that government grants remain fixed and domestic tuition rates have been frozen at 2019/20 rates for the past four years. 

As Arthur reported back in December, the Board is moving forward with increases to international student tuition of between 5-8%. Students who are beginning their studies in 2023 or started at Trent in 2021 or 2022 will see their tuition increase by $2,095 for the 2023/24 academic year. International students who started their degrees in or before 2017 will see their tuition increase by between $1,142 and $1,237. 

As in previous years, enrolment growth has outperformed predictions as enrolment growth was predicted to come in at 2.7% or an increase of 303 Full Time Equivalents (FTE). At Friday’s meeting, however, it was revealed that the actual enrollment increase for the 2022/23 academic year came in at 4.3% which equates to $6.5M more in net tuition revenue for the fiscal year than projected.

Partially as a result of this, the Board’s report goes on to note that “Trent is now projecting a positive financial position for the year of approximately $6.9 million, which may be used for needed resources to address unplanned enrolment growth on which the projection is based, university capacity (both personnel and physical resources), other operating pressures including deferred maintenance, and strategic investments.”

The budget outlines a total of $5.175M in new strategic investments across four main areas including student support, academic, administration and support, and academic support. 

Highlights include $1M devoted to student support which includes graduate teaching assistants, student financial aid, academic advisors, and communications alongside $163,000 in new permanent investments in graduate studies and $81,000 in support to enhance online learning. 

$267,000 is being allocated in the strategic investments plan for recruitment and external relations while a further $515,000 is being allocated to facilities management, security and Trent Lands and Nature Plan.

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Student-to-Faculty Ratio:

Part of the strategic investments outlined in the 2023/24 budget includes investments in fifteen new faculty positions. The majority of these positions will be tenured faculty members. 

The goal, the report states, is to maintain student-to-faculty ratios at their current levels moving forward by investing in these new faculty positions. 

In Maclean’s 2023 rankings, Trent ranked last out of nineteen primarily undergraduate universities for student-to-faculty ratio at a stated number of 34.8 students to faculty - more than double those of the top five ranked schools on the list and making Trent’s ratio in line with or higher than larger schools like the University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, and Queens.

Meanwhile, the Trent Board of Governor’s own data shows a number for the same time period as being 42.9 with the new faculty investments only projected to bring the number down to 42.4.

For a little more added confusion, as of the 2022/23 academic year, Trent’s own website purports that the university holds a 21:1 student-to-faculty ratio - less than half the actual internally reported amount.

Graphs within the Board’s report demonstrate that total enrollment growth in the decade from 2013-2023 has increased by 56% or 4,532 students while the faculty count has increased by a total of fourteen (5%) - from 281 to 295 - in the same time period.

Projected numbers for the upcoming academic year change the picture only slightly, especially when one considers Trent routinely underestimates enrollment growth year over year. Should 2023/24 unfold as anticipated, the increase in students will rise to 5,039 or a 62% increase over 2013 headcounts while the number of faculty will have only increased by 10% over that same time period. 

A net gain of twenty-nine faculty members since 2013 indicates that over the past decade there have been 174 new students for every new faculty position created at Trent. 

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Forward Looking Growth: 

Trent is projecting FTE enrollment growth of 2.6% for the 2023/24 academic year. This is an increase of 302 over 2022/23 actuals. The Board concedes, as they do every year, that this is a conservative projection for budgetary planning purposes. Based on previous years, the real number of year-over-year enrollment growth across Peterborough and Durham campuses is closer to 4.5%. 

Within this model of enrollment planning, Trent is expecting domestic undergraduate enrollment to grow at 1% per year in Peterborough while Durham will increase by 4.7%, 4.5%, and 1% over the course of 2023, 2024, and 2025. 

Increases in international undergraduate enrollment are projected to grow at staggering rates of 31% and 23.7% in 2023 and 2024 in Peterborough and 43.1% and 30.1% in Durham over the same timeline. 

According to the budget, undergraduate scholarship expenses are estimated at $579 per FTE, plus 4.8% of international undergraduate tuition revenue to support international scholarships and fee waivers. These expenses are highly variable and depend heavily on the entrance grades of students year-to-year.  

Graduate scholarship expenses are estimated to amount to 27% of related tuition revenue for research and thesis based programs. This is in addition to 41.6% of international graduate tuition revenue to support international fee waivers and bursaries for international graduate students in researching and thesis-based programs. 

When combined, international undergraduate and graduate student tuition combined is projected to make up 44% of the tuition fees received by Trent in 2023/24 while making up 16% of the student population.

Discussion on the budget was scarce and it was quickly passed by the Board following a presentation by VP Finance and Administration, Tariq Al-idrissi. 

When asked specifically about whether this budget has adequately taken into account the demands of students for more supports following the pandemic, Al-idrissi responded that “for as far back as I can remember, I think we will keep using the same modeling that we're using, as long as that modeling is actually giving us the results that we want, it is fair to say that sometimes variables will change.”

“There's a reason we take a conservative approach, as well,” he continued, “we did not go for the most optimistic revenue projections, we did not go for the most, maybe unrealistic expense projections, we went in a very conservative fashion in which we actually looked at these things.”

The modelling approach, it would seem, is working for the Board. Whether it’s working for the students who study at Trent is another story altogether.